Glossary
Bitrate
How much data a video spends per second of playback, measured in megabits per second. It is the main control over file size and picture quality.
Every second of a video is stored in some number of bits, and bitrate is that number. It is written in megabits per second, Mbps, and it is the setting that decides both how large the file is and how good it looks. Length times bitrate is the file size, near enough.
Why screen recordings need less than you think
A camera sees a slightly different picture every frame: grain, tiny movements, light shifting. The encoder has to describe all of it, and that takes bits.
A screen is the opposite. Between a click and the next one, most of the frame is pixel for pixel identical to the frame before, and the encoder stores that as "same as last time" for almost nothing. What costs bits is text, which is full of hard edges, and scrolling, which changes the whole frame at once. So a 1080p screen recording that reads clearly at 8 to 12 Mbps would be a blocky mess as camera footage at the same rate.
When it is too low
The tell is blocks and smearing around whatever moved: a scroll that turns to mush for a moment and then sharpens, or text that goes soft while the pointer crosses it. The still parts of the frame look fine. If the whole frame is soft all the time, the problem is resolution, and no amount of bitrate brings back detail that was never captured.
The upload trap
Every video platform re-encodes what you upload at a bitrate of its choosing, and it is lower than yours. A file that looked clean on your Mac comes back softer, and there is nothing to be done about it except give the platform more to start from: a higher resolution puts the upload in a higher-bitrate tier, which is why a 4K upload of a 1080p recording often plays back cleaner than the 1080p file did.
Related terms
- CodecThe method used to compress video into a file and decompress it for playback. H.264 and HEVC are the two you meet when recording a screen.
- Frame rateThe number of still pictures a video shows each second, written as fps. Screen recordings are usually made at 30 or 60.
- ResolutionThe size of a video's picture in pixels, width by height. 1080p is 1920 by 1080; 4K is 3840 by 2160.
Questions people ask
- What bitrate should a 1080p screen recording have?
- Around 8 to 12 Mbps keeps sharp text at 1080p and 60 fps. Screen content compresses well because most of the frame is still between changes, so it needs less than camera footage of the same size.
- Why does my video look worse after uploading it?
- Every video platform re-encodes what you upload at its own bitrate, and that bitrate is lower than yours. Uploading at a higher bitrate and resolution than you need gives the platform more to work from, which is why a 4K upload often plays back cleaner at 1080p than a 1080p upload does.